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Madison Square Garden

hey, you can't forget Madison Square Garden

and the gruesome end of its architect Stanford White in it---

The opening night celebration was attended by 17,000 people, some of whom paid as much as $50 per head. In the audience were some of the wealthiest, most influential figures of the age: J.P. Morgan, the Pierponts, the Whitneys, General William Tecumseh Sherman, and the architect Stanford White,

White, ironically, would spend his last hours in the roof garden cabaret 16 years later. It is a story that still fascinates.

Stanford White was not only America's leading urban architect but also one of the most notorious of playboys. His name had been linked with many of the beauties of the age, including the Floradora Girls who performed nightly at the Gardenšs Casino. One of those girls was a beautiful young woman named Evelyn Nesbitt who had married a Pittsburgh millionaire named Harry Thaw. White's name had been romantically linked with Nesbitt before and after her marriage to Thaw.

On the night of June 25, 1906, Thaw was attending a dinner-show with his wife at the cabaret, when he rose to leave the dining room, he suddenly turned on his heel and walked to White's table where he drew a revolver and fired three times at White's head.

White died in the building he designed, Thaw after one hung jury, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The story has been depicted in several movies, notably in "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" and "Ragtime."

After a competition with no winner, a committee headed by A. B. Mullet was formed to design the building. Never liked, it was dubbed "Mullet's monstrosity," and as early as 1920 efforts to demolish it were underway. Because of a land-rights dispute between the city and federal authorities, the building stood until 1938, when the beautification of City Hall Park for the 1939 World's Fair hastened its demise. Abbott recorded the much-maligned building a month before it was razed.

I tried editing it to say "wasn't" liked but my computer crashed when I was doing that.....Anyway I like it too. It looks odd with the Mansard roof and the symmetry of it's windows reminds me a little bit of the cast irons in Soho.